Connecting history with the present

"Anyone know the capital of Eritrea?" asked the young man at the podium.

The man in the crowd said "Asmara" and won an Eritrean dress shirt.

With the question, Mawi Asgedom was making a point Sunday afternoon at the DuSable Museum of African-American History, just as he was asked to do after the visit to Chicago of the schooner Amistad.

"Study your past, your glorious past, what your people have created," he said, reminding the audience that Asmara is in an area of the Earth that has known civilization for almost 10,000 years, a crossroads for nomads who spread out across Africa.

Others said they wondered how to process the steady drumbeat of modern-day bad news out of that continent. He had another suggestion: "Be aware of the beauty of the land and the people, their challenges, their architecture, their arts."

Africa, he added, is many cultures, many countries, not simply a place of wars, famine and AIDS.

Mawi, as he prefers to be called, was invited to speak at DuSable, the nation's oldest African-American museum, as part of a summer series of exhibits, workshops and seminars honoring the spirit of the original Amistad.

The ship's deck, in 1839, was the site of a historic revolt by African slaves, rebelling against their Spanish captors as they sailed along the coast of Cuba. It led to the first court-ordered freeing of slaves in the United States.

"We need to carry on the dialogue about human justice," urged Stephanie Davenport, the museum's director of educational services, noting that the ship has become a vital piece in the telling of America's history.

But the message of Mawi--who began life in a rural village in Eritrea and in 1999 graduated from Harvard University with a degree in American history--was as much about the present and future as about the past.

"I remember what Dr. King said, `Where do we go from here?' That is the question. How do we become the people we are supposed to be?" he asked, before proposing some answers.

"They asked me to speak about slavery," he went on, "but I want to talk about mental slavery."

To Mawi, "if we want our kids to be successful, they need food, water--and the right mindset," he suggested, telling something of his own travels, from Eritrea to a refugee camp in Sudan to a roadside motel in Wheaton.

His family was placed there by World Relief, a church group that helped them settle in the U.S.

"The one thing I had to help me was my mind," he said, describing how he retained pride in his origins even when bullies taunted him. Later, at Wheaton North High School, he made the track team and earned a scholarship to Harvard.

"In my language, we have a saying, `Keep the mysteries of your home and your family to yourself,'" Mawi said. He added, "I want to show that it is cool to see beauty in other people."

Now 26, he is the author of a book about his life, "Of Beetles and Angels." The title, he explained, refers to the "little people" who make society work--and to those who are sent by God to help others.

He also has a Web site, www.mawispeaks.com, describing his work as a motivational speaker and his upcoming book, "The Code," his advice for teenagers struggling to understand an increasingly complex world.